In the past, complex documents were assembled by hand from a variety of sources. The assembly of these documents required the frequent publication of errata, addenda, and new volumes. Even the newest volumes of some documents were soon no longer current.
With the advent of computers and electronic publication, it was believed that all of this was a thing of the past. Using "cut" and "paste" operations, electronic copies of documents could be assembled rapidly and could reflect up to the minute information. Tools were developed to support these efforts by importing several document parts into a single document for publication. These features, known as "import" or "publish and subscribe" have become quite common.
Unfortunately, the problems of paper document assembly still exist. Each electronic document is only as current as the time it was generated. Therefore, the time between generation of individual parts and generation of the whole, as well as any time since generation of the document renders information "stale." Each part of the finished document must be constructed in advance and stored in a predetermined location in order to ensure correct electronic document construction. The administration of a document construction process requires communications with all parties and schedule management.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,530,852 in the name of Meske, Jr. Et al., a method of extracting profiles and topics from files and generating indices thereof is disclosed. The method disclosed relies on natural language parsing and automatically generates some electronic documents for improving information access and ease of use. Unfortunately, the method constructs a file in dependence upon other existing files and therefore, suffers from some of the limitations outlined above. Methods for searching existing files in order to construct a complete document, a table of contents, or an index is known. These methods are very useful in an age where information changes periodically and where these changes can be measured in months or years. Unfortunately, as change increases, these same methods become less applicable to newly arising problems.
In contrast, existing document construction software, an example of which is Omnimark.RTM. V.1, allow for document assembly in the known fashion described above. Omnimark.RTM. V.1, however, provides document assembly of existing documents. When an included document is not present or requires construction, an error is reported.